


gods and monsters

by nonbinarynino



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Endgame Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Environmentalism, F/M, Merperson Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Minor Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe, Misanthropy, Profanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26243677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarynino/pseuds/nonbinarynino
Summary: The music stops, abrupt. Marinette almost asks him why he’s not going to continue when he blurts out, “You have a tail.”She freezes, the gills on her throat stuttering rapidly in the panic. This has gone horribly, horribly wrong. She lurches backwards, crashing the majority of her body under the water. “Wait! I’m not-”Not what? Not going to tell anyone? Not one of the bad humans? Not scared of her?(Or, the one where Marinette is a mermaid and Luka is apparently nocturnal.)
Relationships: Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Lê Chiến Kim, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug's Parents
Comments: 41
Kudos: 202
Collections: Miraculous Stories





	1. crescendo

**Author's Note:**

> ITS BEEN LIKE A YEAR... SINCE MY LAST ML FIC... BUT.....
> 
> i never stopped writing baybee
> 
> e-girl marinette is NEXT.....

Marinette notices him for the first time during one of her many late night exploits, after all of her friends have long since drifted into sleep and she has grown excessively fidgety. Most of the time, she’ll sleep right there next to them, curled up with Alya, but sometimes energy thrums within her no matter the hour, and she simply must find somewhere to work it off.

Oftentimes when this happens, she finds herself on the nearest sunbathing rock, staring into the night sky until the lights scattered across the horizon fade away in favor of the big, all-encompassing light that brings the start of the morning. Or she’ll swim laps around the merpeople’s territory, a half-baked patrol to reassure herself that her family and friends are safe.

But sometimes, just sometimes, when the jitters simply won’t go away, she’ll sneak all the way past the edge of their waters, into the human’s land. She’s not supposed to go there, not when everybody knows how dangerous it is, but sometimes she just wants to know _everything!_ She wants to know how the sand feels when it’s dry, and she wants to know what humans do when they don’t know that anybody is looking at them. It’s not like she’s going to talk to any of them. She just wants to observe them, to see what they’re really like. Are they mean to each other, too, or is it just what lives in the sea that fills them with rage? Do they ever laugh and smile? Do they make some of the same facial expressions that Marinette does, like when she scrunches up her nose or twists her lips in boredom? Are they redeemable in any capacity?

They must be. Marinette doesn’t have much to go off of, but she _knows_ that there must be a good human out there. There are certainly mean merpeople, and countless of them! Chloé is the rudest, most offensive person that Marinette has _ever_ met, and she has a tail, not legs! Maybe only the humans on the ships are evil, and maybe, just maybe, the ones on land aren’t so bad. She simply couldn’t _bear_ it if she’s been writing off all humans as despicable her whole life for no reason, so she needs to know. It'll be enough to just see one of them smile or laugh - and then she'll never go back again.

She knows that she’s going to do it before she even arises from her sleeping place, even though the rational part of her mind tries to talk her out of it. _Maman will get mad at you,_ she tells herself. _A human could see you. You could get caught in a net. It’s dangerous._

But the scary parts just thrill her more, so after a few more pointless internal words, she sits up, making sure not to flutter her tail so hard that anybody wakes up from the motions. Once she leaves the cavern, though, she swims with a fury. She only has so much time before sunrise, after all, and she knows that once sunlight hits, the humans flock to the ocean like krill to phytoplankton. At night, there’s only ever one or two, staring at the lights or too involved in another human to pay attention to her. There’s no real risk, really, no matter what Maman or Alya say.

It’s usually a long swim, but she’s so excited that she makes it there in half the time. The sand rises and rises until her tail hits it with each flutter, and she surfaces slowly, her nerves battling with her excitement. When her face finally peeks out, her eyes slowly opening as they fight against the salt water, she sees another set of eyes staring straight back at her.

 _Shit._ Marinette squeaks, the sound loud in the quiet of the night, and ducks down so that only her eyes are above water. The human is a male, and even though she can’t make out many of his facial features, not in the dark like this, she can see that his hair is a lighter blue than hers. He’d been sitting on some sort of cloth, but at her noise, he’s pushing himself onto his feet, walking slowly towards the water.

“Are you okay?” he asks, taking another step closer. Marinette swims further backwards, the motion making him stop short. It's as if he doesn't want to scare her. “If you’re injured, I can call someone. I don’t have to come closer to you.”

Marinette hesitates. This is a bad idea. She should swim away _right now,_ and let him think that she’s just an illusion of the night. He’ll wake up in the morning, thinking that it was a dream. But he’s already seen her, and he’s looking at her so intently that she knows that he’ll have this all committed to memory anyway. _I’m such an idiot,_ she thinks, before smashing every rule into pieces.

“I’m fine,” she says, slow, trying to control how her voice comes out. Her voice doesn’t exactly sound like a human’s. Her range far extends what they can do - she can make her voice so rough that all sea creatures in sight swim away, or so soft that it’s barely audible. It is, after all, what she’s supposed to do - lure humans in with a sweet melody, and then eat them.

“Are you sure?” he responds, sounding dubious, but he settles back down onto his cloth anyway. He picks up some sort of contraption from where it had been laying next to him. It’s rounded, about as big as her torso, with a long stick extending from it. “It’s October. You must be freezing. Do you even have a towel?”

Marinette doesn’t know what October is, or a towel, but she doesn’t say so. She needs to pretend to be a human, at least until he stops caring and she can swim away. “I - I don’t need a towel.”

He shrugs, looking down at his contraption. He touches it a few times, and - and this _tone_ comes out of it, like the sounds that Alya makes when she doesn’t think that anyone can hear her humming. It’s _music,_ emitting from his very fingers. Can humans use music to lure enemies, too?

“What is that?” she blurts, too perplexed to hold herself back. “That - that object that you’re holding.”

He stops short, looking back up at her in surprise. “Wh - you really don’t know? It’s a guitar. Haven’t you ever seen one before?”

“Of course I have,” she lies, unthinkingly moving closer towards him. She’s so close to the shore now that she can sit in the sand and have the water whisper at her shoulders. “I just forgot.”

The man looks rather stunned, though he does not voice why. “Oh.” Instead of continuing the conversation, he touches the contraption again. Now that she’s a little closer to him, she can see that there are little threads that he touches, and they are what emits the sound. He plays a tune that is fast-paced but easy on the ears. It evolves into something sweeter, a little slower, but still happy - like going to sleep after a great day. Marinette is addicted to it, and pushes herself a little closer, so close that she could reach out and touch where the water met the sand if she wanted.

The music stops, abrupt. Marinette almost asks him why he’s not going to continue when he blurts out, “You have a tail.”

She freezes, the gills on her throat stuttering rapidly in the panic. This has gone horribly, horribly wrong. She lurches backwards, crashing the majority of her body under the water. “Wait! I’m not-” 

The rest of whatever the man had planned on saying is muffled as she ducks her head back under, swimming frantically back home. She is so screwed. Maman will put her on fishing duty for _months_ if she finds out. No one can know! Humans are so dumb that the man will probably think that it was a fever dream, or a hallucination, or just pretend that it never happened entirely. They care so much about what others think about them, Maman always says, which is why they do bad things. They do bad things because they want everyone to think that they are evil, because then they can’t get hurt.

“ _Wait! I’m not-_ ” Not what? Not going to tell anyone? Not one of the bad humans? Not scared of her?

_I’m never going back there. Never, ever, ever._

* * *

The next night, Marinette is restless again.

It’s worse than it’s ever been. She tosses and turns, flaps her tail in attempts to get the jitters out, and all to no avail. She does ten laps around her cave, sits on the sunbathing rock, counts down from a thousand, but nothing makes it go away. The energy eats at her, consumes her, and the voice in her head keeps whispering, _go back. Go back. Go back._

“No,” she whispers to herself from where she sits on the rock. “I can’t go back! That human is probably there with a bunch of spears and daggers and, and he’ll skin me for my scales, and then I’ll never see Alya finish courting Nino, and Papa will cry so much that every animal in the ocean will ache.”

Marinette hesitates for one, two, three more moments, closing her eyes. She is so stupid.

She dives back into the water, and heads for the shore.

* * *

He’s there again.

He’s not using his guitar, though. He’s sitting on some cloth, staring into the ocean, almost as if he’s waiting for her to come back. The idea is scary, so she stays in the shadows. He wants to talk to her, maybe for nefarious reasons, and _everything_ is pointing to her going back home.

But that music had been so sweet, and he had offered to help her, before he had known that she wasn’t human. Maybe he’s not bad. Maybe he’s nice and curious like her.

 _If it goes bad, I’ll just eat him,_ she tells herself, but the self-reassurance falls flat. She’s never lived in a time where they were allowed to hunt humans, ever since one of their own had been slaughtered like a salmon right in front of the group, back in the time of her grandmother. It just sounds _gross._ Papa says that the food humans eat is what makes the air sick, so Marinette can’t imagine that eating them would taste much better.

She doesn’t say anything, but she makes her presence known anyway, swimming close enough to shore that she can sit down. She watches him the whole time, unwilling to turn her back on him. When he notices her, he stills, but doesn’t say anything, either. It’s like they’re both waiting for the other to speak, but both are unwilling to make the compromise to say anything first.

He breaks first, after the silence has stretched into something way too tense. “You came back,” he says, as if it had been the last thing on his list of expectations.

“So did you,” she counters, not knowing what else to say - not knowing if she should be saying anything at all. She leans back, her clawed hands digging into the sand behind her as she looks at the human next to her. “Where’s your _guitar_?”

“I didn’t bring it tonight,” he tells her, leaning back to mirror her position. “I didn’t come to play music. I came to see you again.”

Marinette’s face feels hot, as though the sun is somehow baking down on her, even at night. Something similar to embarrassment curls in her gut, along with the tension of her being here at all. “But you weren’t expecting me.”

“No, but I wanted to,” he says. “My name is Luka. Do you have a name?” _Luka._ It’s kind of a weird name, but she supposes that it isn’t much weirder than her own. He’ll probably think that hers is confusing, too.

“Of _course_ I have a name,” she snaps, her tone angrier than she really is. “We don’t all just call each other _merperson._ ”

Instead of getting offended, he huffs a laugh. The sound relaxes her a little bit, so she stops glaring at his face in favor of peeking down at his legs. They’re long, and clothed in something black and ripped. He must fall down all the time in order to have jeans that are shredded. “Forgive me, I’m a little out of my depth here. Didn’t really believe that mermaids were real until last night.”

“You didn’t?” Marinette asks, disbelieving. “But we all know that you’re real. And you humans have hurt us. You should at least know that we exist.”

Luka lifts up his shoulders and drops them. “I guess that the humans you met kept quiet about it, or, if you want to be morbid, they probably died. A lot of sailors die at sea, especially in the old days.”

 _Good._ Complete ignorance about mermaids is better than her fears that all humans wanted to slaughter them on sight. “Do I scare you?”

He thinks about it for a moment, but then he laughs again. “Besides the fact that you have claws and fangs sharp enough to snap my neck, no. I don’t think that I’m very scared. Are you scared of me?”

Marinette grows quiet, unsure if she should lie so that her answer matches his. “A little, but…” _I’ve always been too trusting for my own good. Curiosity killed the clownfish._ “... but I think that I could defend myself, if I had to.”

“I won’t hurt you,” he says. “It’s what I was trying to say last night, when you left. I’m not going to hurt you, miss. I just think that you’re something special.”

Maybe that’s enough to go off of for now. “My name is Marinette,” she tells him. Maybe she shouldn’t have done it - names hold power, after all - but the intrigued, warm look on his face is enough for her not to regret it.

He extends his hand, slowly, as if he’s trying not to startle a minnow. “Enchanted to meet you, Marinette.” It takes her another second to realize that he wants her to put her hand there, so she does, slipping her fingers over his, careful not to prick him with her claws. His hand is rough like her father’s, but much smaller. Instead of claws, he has short, barely-there fingernails, dark as the night itself.

“Your nails are black,” she says, surprised. Unthinkingly, she runs a finger over one of them, feeling how the texture differs from her own. It’s smoother, silkier. “I thought that humans had nails the color of their skin.”

“I painted them that way,” he tells her, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that she has taken hold of his hand longer than he had probably been offering. “Maybe one day I can do yours, too.”

Marinette frowns at the suggestion. She knows that coming again will be a mistake. This is best left as a one-night deal, one that he can eventually question the existence of. “You could kill my family.”

“I won’t,” he insists, and she almost believes him. He certainly sounds sincere, but people in her clan have been fooled before, and paid the price. She does not want to continue the streak.

“You could tell other humans where I am, and _they_ could kill my family.”

“I won’t.”

Marinette huffs. Sure, he’s _saying_ that, but there’s no way that she can actually trust him. He could sweet talk her for days and days, and then one day, he could be here waiting for her with a pitchfork.

“You don’t need to come if you don’t want to,” he assures her, “but I’ll be here tomorrow night. And the night after. In case you want to see me.”

She releases his hand from her grip, knowing that she can’t stay for long. Every moment that she swims outside of her territory is borrowed time. “Goodbye,” she says, firm, unable to give him a clear answer.

* * *

The next time that she comes, he’s sitting closer to the shoreline, with his lower half kissing the water every time that a wave rolls in. She swims up to him, much less hesitantly than the two times before, but it takes a while for him to notice. He’s staring upwards at the sky. Marinette pushes herself into a sitting position next to him, submerging her tail into the water so that she doesn’t become dehydrated.

“Hello, Marinette,” he says, pleased. It's weird hearing her name with his human voice. “I’m glad that you came.”

Marinette simply hums in response, not wanting to disturb the peaceful quiet that he had been basking in before. She tilts her head back, looking upwards. She can see why he’s so distracted by the sky - it’s beautiful tonight, more purple than black, and the lights are shining so brightly, as if they are kissing her skin all on their own.

“The sky is prettier by the sea,” he tells her. “In the city, you can barely see a thing. You just see smog.”

Marinette nods, having heard all of the stories. “ _Maman_ says that you can’t even see the lights, and sometimes not even the moon.”

“We call the lights _stars,_ ” he says. “We see shapes in their patterns and make stories about them. Usually the stories are about gods and goddesses of the past. Do you do that?” He points to a specific light, and then draws a shape with his fingers. Marinette wonders what story he's thinking of.

 _Stars._ It sounds kinda weird, but she won’t make fun of his language like that. How can he call them anything but _light_ when that is their only substance? “Not really. But our gods did create them.”

“Your gods? Do mermaids have different gods than humans?” His curiosity is conflicting - on one hand, it shows that he's here for similar reasons that Marinette is: to simply know _more._ At the same time, however, the information he gains could be dangerous.

“Humans have _gods_?" It had taken Marinette a minute to even process that. "But you’re so - so -” _unruly. Ungodly._

“Tell me about yours,” he says. "It'd be a privilege to learn more about you."

“There’s two," Marinette replies, ignoring that weird sun-hot feeling that has come back with a vengeance. "There’s Tikki, the goddess of creation, and Plagg, the god of destruction. Once, they were the only beings that existed. Tikki loved Plagg, so she created a beautiful world for him. She created a wide ocean with clear waters and white sand, created beautiful forests with dark green leaves, made fish and dolphins and turtles and even animals that don’t exist anymore. She created the ligh- _stars._ She created humans and mermaids and they lived together. They even liked each other.

“But Plagg got upset - because he liked the world the way that it had been before, when it had just been the two of them. He got jealous of all of the other creatures taking up her attention. But he knew that destroying her world directly would just incriminate him, so he went to the humans. He told them that burning down trees was the best way for them to show their devotion to him. He said that they should start to kill animals not just for food, but for sport. And most of all, he told them dirty lies about the mermaids. He said that they were planning on eating all of the humans so that they could have the world for just their own.

The humans got scared, so they decided to fight the mermaids first. They cut their throats at the gills, plucked off their scales and hung them up tail-first. It started off a massacre, but ended with a war, with a lot of dead. Tikki was so distraught, and nothing she could do would end the war. So she disappeared. Plagg left shortly after, because all he had wanted in the first place was to be with Tikki.”

Luka is quiet for a long time, and Marinette realizes that it’s the most that she’s ever spoken in front of him. She hadn’t been trying to make herself sound especially human either, so hopefully he was still able to comprehend her pitch and tone. Before she can lose her nerve in the face of his silence, he says, “where did they go?”

“We all have our own theories, I suppose," Marinette says. Everyone's theories are usually respected, but they still vary wildly. "Maman thinks that they are sleeping until they are needed again. Alya thinks that they will never come back, because Tikki would cry so much that the ocean would fill the world.”

“What do you think?” he asks. Marinette feels his eyes on her instead of the stars, so she risks a glance at him - he looks serious, but not solemn. He's definitely not making fun of her for her beliefs so far, so she doesn't feel too nervous about sharing her own theory now.

“I think - I think that they’re still around," she says. "I feel Tikki when I see baby turtles, the sunrise, and when my friends make me laugh. I feel Plagg when I’m angry, when I see the trash that humans leave in my home, and when we mourn our dead. I think they are everywhere and nowhere all at once.” Marinette looks at the waves, wondering, not for the first time, if Tikki and Plagg can hear her speak of them.

Luka considers this, before looking back up at the sky. “They could be in the stars.”

Marinette spends just a moment thinking about the concept. The concept of Tikki and Plagg being omnipresent, watching over them, but never _helping,_ leaves a bad taste in her mouth. Nonetheless, she looks at the stars, and wonders if any of the patterns depict mer gods. “Tell me about your gods,” she says, not wanting to think about it any longer.

“Well, that’s a bit more complex, I suppose," Luka says with a sigh, almost as if the topic tires him. Marinette wonders if people are less accepting of different theories where he's from. "People believe in different gods depending on their cultures, what they value, you know, things like that.”

“What ones do you believe in?”

Luka does that weird movement with his shoulders again, where he raises and drops them very quickly. Marinette figures that it might be a substitute for saying _I don’t know._ “I don’t really believe in any of them. It doesn’t feel like it’s my place to tell all these believers that they’re wrong and that I’m right. How are we supposed to know who’s real and who’s fake?”

“Why can’t they all be real? Why does anybody have to be wrong?” Marinette considers how she would feel if somebody told her that there was another mer god besides Tikki or Plagg. Angry, maybe, if they told her that Tikki and Plagg never existed at all. But if they were to say that Tikki and Plagg had a godly child or friend, for example … Marinette doesn’t think that would make her upset. It could be like choosing whether or not to make a new friend, and still feeling complete no matter what choice is made.

His voice sounds funny when he talks next. “I don’t know. I guess that I’d never thought about it that way.”

Marinette copies his shoulder movement, and feels quite stiff while doing so. “Maybe you should.”

* * *

They begin to meet up more frequently. Almost every night, once everyone in her clan is asleep, Marinette darts off to the shore. Sure, it ends up with her sleeping most of the day away, but as long as she completes most of her chores, no one really minds. Papa frets, the way that he tends to, but Maman laughs it off with a _we were all young once, Tom._ Marinette suspects, sometimes, that her mom might know something, but it’s not like her to stay quiet, so she pushes the worries aside.

The water grows colder and the seasons change. Meeting up with Luka, well, it begins to feel different. More similar to talking to Alya than to talking to a stranger. She learns so much about the world that he lives in. She learns that humans sit at a desk for nine hours a day, five days a week (how exhausting!). She learns that in some of their sports, they just beat each other up. (“I think you’d get a kick out of it. I should show you sometime.”) 

The more that she learns about his world, the more her questions gear towards what _he’s_ like. His sister is a makeup artist (that whole concept took some explaining) with a fiancee and a dog. He’s in a band, but not the type of music that Marinette knows or likes. And once she starts to really, really know him, she learns that he’s lonely. His family is always traveling, and sometimes his friends feel more like acquaintances. Marinette doesn’t want to say it aloud, but she can barely imagine the concept of loneliness. Living in a world where she could only see her parents once a _year?_ She can’t imagine being separated from her clan for that long.

One time, when she gets there, he has a bag with him. There are _weird_ smells coming from it. Sharp, and chemical, and gross. She spends so much time glaring at it that instead of greeting her, he says, “you can say no.”

“What is it?” Marinette asks, leaning closer despite the pungent smell. “It smells bad. Like when humans pour gross liquids in the ocean, and I can’t get the smell out of my nose for weeks.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t smell great,” Luka agrees, with a smile in his voice. He opens the bag and pulls out some small bottles with tall, skinny handles. “But it’s not bad for you, I swear. I made sure to get stuff that’s really good for the environment. It’s cruelty-free, and vegan!”

“Humans are so violent that not everything is _cruelty-free_?” Marinette is horrified. “Are there brands that _aren’t_ cruelty free? Are they made with human bones and blood and -”

“No, no, no,” he assures her, “nothing like that. I will tell you about that another time, after I’ve, ah, done more research.” He holds his hand out to give her one of the bottles. She takes it, feeling the glass under her fingertips. The color underneath the glass is bright pink. “It’s called nail polish. You asked me, in the beginning, about my nails? Yeah. This is what I use to paint them. I figured that I could paint yours tonight, if you want to! You’ll just have to keep them out of the water for a while after so that it can dry.”

Marinette hesitates. It sounds harmless… and the color that he had handed her _does_ match her tail. “Does it hurt?” She feels embarrassed for asking immediately after, though she doesn’t really know why.

Luka smiles again, but not like he’s laughing at her for asking. “No, but the polish can get a little cold,” he says. “You can even watch me do mine first, if you’d rather.”

“That’s fine,” she says, quickly. She wants to take part in the activities that are part of his daily routine - wants to know more about him. If he can paint his nails everyday, she can paint hers just once. “Just stop if I tell you to.”

“Of course,” he agrees. “For you, Marinette, I’d stop anything.”

The actual process of getting her nails painted is, well, interesting. She isn’t very good at staying still, but she tries. He never gets mad at her no matter how many times she jumps and makes him mess up. He’s so _close_ to her, too, closer than he’d ever really been. He touches her hand softly, as if he’d break her if he squeezed too hard. Which is honestly kind of silly, because she could probably kill him with her bright pink nails if she wanted to.

Not that she wants to. In all honesty, her nights with Luka make her feel a way that she’s never really _felt_ before. Not that it’s stronger than her relationships with the people from her clan, but it’s different, and powerful. He makes her laugh a lot, and he _looks_ at her with the same amazement that he had the night that he’d discovered she existed at all. The mere act of being perceived by him is almost enchanting.

“You’re blushing,” he tells her, “and you’re close enough that I can hear the crescendo of your breath.”

“I’m not blushing,” Marinette lies, for the drama of it all. “ _Y_ _ou’re_ blushing.”

“Maybe I am,” Luka agrees, with a surprisingly casual air. “After all, I’m basically holding hands with the prettiest girl that I’ve ever seen. And _she’s_ blushing at me, which means that obviously I’m something special, so I’ve gotta be blushing too.”

Marinette hates how put together he is while saying stuff like that. She will blush and stammer when Alya talks about her tender conversations with Nino, and that’s not even about _her_ relationship! “I _do_ think that you’re special,” she says instead, looking straight down at her nails instead of him. “You’re not the first human I’ve seen, just the first one that I’ve _met._ I see them drop trash from their boats, and they laugh about it. I see the sharks get dropped back in without their fins! I - I see _cruelty,_ but you’re not like that. You’re… ‘cruelty-free,’ right?”

Luka stays silent for a moment. Hopefully she didn't say anything to offend him. “How many humans do you see, say, a month? Excluding me. One? Two? More?”

“I definitely see a lot of boats,” Marinette tells him. They float overhead a lot, so her clan will stay in their cave and wait until the ripples fade away. “But I’m only really close enough to humans to see them, well, once a month sounds right. More, sometimes.”

“How many humans do you see that _don’t_ litter? That don’t hurt sharks or fish, or mermaids?” It seems like he's getting at something, but she doesn't really know _what._

“Well, when they get really close to home, it’s almost always bad,” Marinette says. Sometimes she'll watch the plastic float all the way down to the sea floor, unable to do anything until the boat moves far enough away. “Papa says they need to go out real deep to get more fish, so it’s almost always the hunters that go far from shore. But… the ones that I see on my way to talk to you, or the ones that I see when I go for a swim… they’re usually pretty quiet. I don’t really see them do anything good _or_ bad.”

“There are more humans like that then you might think,” he says, and _oh._ Maybe he's answering the question that she's had in her head the whole time. “I don’t think that I’m that special at all. Every day, the world gets a little better. You’re right, humans have left the world in an abysmal state. But people are realizing that, and they’re fighting against it now. I bet you probably see the worst of it, out there, but… don’t write us all off, okay? There are some people out there really fighting to keep the ocean clean.”

Marinette almost feels bad, then, for how antagonistic that she’s been. This whole time, she’s been viewing humanity as almost all bad, with Luka as the only real exception. But it’s almost _impossible_ that she would meet the only nice human in the world. There’s got to be more. “How many humans would you say are good?” she asks, curious to see how his opinion contrasts her (old?) one. “I’ve always wondered, you know, what humans are like when they’re not on boats. Are the humans on land all good people?”

“It’s not really that easy, Mari,” he tells her, and oh, huh, that nickname feels new. It's softer than just _Marinette._ More tender. “Everyone’s a little bit good, and everyone’s a little bit bad. It’s probably similar to your friends and family, right? I bet some of them have some pretty annoying qualities.”

“Chloé,” she says without hesitation. “Chloé is a brat. When I was eleven, I tried to swim away to another clan because she bullied me so much.”

“We have people like Chloé, too,” he says, softly, like the songs that she sings when no one is there to listen, “but we also have people like Marinette.”

And maybe, just maybe, when he says that, Marinette gets it. She gets the stupid, dopey look on Alya's face whenever she talks about Nino. She gets the way that Maman and Papa still act like they've just met and are newly infatuated. She _gets_ it.

"Oh," she says, and she doesn’t stop thinking about the way that he’d said those words for the rest of the night.


	2. cadenza

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh, God, you’re hurt,” Luka says. “You’re bleeding.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> connect w/ me on tumblr: sapphicmarinette
> 
> (quietly changes the number of chapters from 2 to 3)

Everything is going great until Marinette gets caught.

Maman _insists_ on going with Marinette to the sunbathing rocks. “ _I haven’t been up there in such a long time,_ ” Maman had said, smiling. Marinette almost would have believed her if it hadn’t been for the strain in her voice when she’d added, “ _and we have so much to catch up on, don’t we, dear?”_

The swim to the rocks is silent. Marinette wonders if her mother is waiting until absolutely no one from the clan can hear. Sure, it could be about something else - it could be _please stop sleeping all day_ or _when are you going to find a suitor_. But it isn’t. Marinette feels it in her fins.

It isn’t until they’ve been sunbathing for a few quiet, tense minutes that Maman says; “I know where you go at night.”

Marinette almost denies it, but she’s not much of a liar. She stays quiet for a long, long time, wondering what there is to say. How she can defend Luka when her mother has never met him? “I’ve never gotten caught,” she says, intentionally vague, in case maybe Maman doesn’t know about Luka, and only knows about the beach. “I’m careful.”

“No, you’re not, Marinette,” Maman says, and the hurt and frustration comes out all at once. “You’re _not_ careful, because you’ve spent the better half of the past two seasons gossiping with a human boy. A human boy who makes you put chemicals on your claws.”

“He didn’t _make_ me,” Marinette replies, unable to stay calm when her mother is so blatantly distressed. “He offered, and he does it all the time! So it was fine. And that was a while ago, Maman, so if I was gonna grow a second tail or something, it would have happened by now.”

“I’m not going to tell you that your admirer is evil. I don’t know him,” Maman explains, though she sure does sound like she thinks Luka is evil. “But what I _do_ know is that if a single other human walks onto the shore when you’re there, you’re dead. You don’t get to come home and say goodbye. You don’t get to run away. You just get _killed._ ”

“You don’t _know_ that!”

“I do,” Maman says, and she doesn’t even sound angry anymore. She just sounds sad. “Marinette, I do not tell you these things to make you mad, or just to be restrictive. I know it because I’ve _lived it._ Your father… he had more family than we speak of. Don’t ask him about it, alright? He had relatives who fell for the same trap that you have, and then we never saw them again.”

“It’s not a _trap_!” Marinette cries, not sure how to react to the new information about her father, so she doesn’t react at all. “You don’t _get it!_ I’ve been talking to Luka since right after the rainy season, and I’ve trusted him for nearly half of that! If he was waiting for the right moment to hurt me, it’s surely passed by now!”

“You aren’t listening to me,” Maman replies, suddenly pleading. “You are my _only_ daughter. You are _barely_ an adult. I cannot lose you. I _won’t._ ”

“If you make me stop seeing him, then you _will,_ ” Marinette replies. “Not because I’ll die, not because I’ll get kidnapped, but because I’ll _miss him!_ He’ll go to the beach for _months_ waiting for me to come back, and I never will! Because what _you_ say is best! Maybe Papa’s family didn’t even get hurt. Maybe they just wanted to be with the people they love just as much as their family.”

Maman stills at that, and Marinette feels as though she has perhaps given up too much information. “I see,” she says. “I won’t stop you if you wish to go tonight. But tomorrow morning, I will be telling your father. And we will talk about it as a _family._ ”

Marinette feels a pull at her heart, one that tells her she knows that she’ll have to make a choice tonight. But outright _permission_ to meet up with a human is something that she never would have expected to get, so she’ll take it with open arms. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she agrees. “I’ll… let him know.”

Maman nods, solemn. “I know that it will be difficult, but it’s for the best.”

It sure doesn’t feel that way.

* * *

Usually, when she’s on her way to see Luka, everything feels almost… magical. The waters are always gentle, but slowly pushing her in his direction all the same. The other creatures in the sea keep their distance, as they tend to, so Marinette often finds herself getting lost in just the current and the salt and the heat of her cheeks.

This time, there’s none of that. She feels so much colder than usual, even though the water’s temperature is no different than it had been last night or the night before. Her whole body feels sluggish, as if trying to prevent her from having the conversation that she knows she must have.

Gods, what will she even _say?_ “My mother told me I have to stop seeing you?” That sounds almost childish, essentially another way to say _I have no independence._ But it’s exactly what had happened. It’s not like she has another _choice._ Mermaids don’t survive for long on their own. There’s strength and intimidation in numbers, and spending a few hours on her own is much different than, eek, _sleeping_ on her own. She doesn’t think that she’d ever wake up.

In truth, she despises the concept of never seeing Luka again. Her friendship with him is not stronger than the ones she has with Alya or Nino, but it certainly is _different._ She has learned so much about humanity, but there is still so much to learn. She’d been meaning to ask Luka if the majority of people know how to to sail, and what he’d meant when he said he liked _bubble tea,_ or if there’s a word for the little movement he does with his shoulders.

She doesn’t realize that there’s a net surrounding her until it touches her belly. She jolts, kicking her tail, but the movement just seems to make matters worse, tightening the net’s grip until she can barely move freely at all. _No,_ she thinks, filled with horror. _Oh Tikki, please, no, no, no._

She doesn’t stop thrashing, desperately hoping that the net will loosen and she will be able to slip out. But that doesn’t happen. The net just raises and raises, until she’s not in the water at all. The air makes her feel even colder, and she gasps in icy, salty air. The rope against her skin stings a lot more now that she’s out of the water, and as the net grows tighter around her, she fights not to cry out as the pain worsens.

“Oh Jesus, guys, what the fuck _is_ that thing?” A voice calls, rough and loud, though Marinette can barely hear it over the sound of her own labored breathing. She looks to her left to see a huge wooden ship, made of dark cherry wood and with a skull on its sails. The walls of the ship are briefly separated into the railing, which Marinette notes as a possible escape plan. There are three sailors - no, _pirates_ \- that she can see right off the bat, but there must be more. The ones that she _can_ see are looking at her as though she has two tails.

“Is that a-”

“Max, go get the boss! He’ll wanna see this.”

“We’re gonna be rich, bro! Holy shit!”

Whoever’s pulling the net dumps her _hard_ against the wooden floor. She tries to scoot away from all of them, but she’s not used to operating outside of water. When she visits Luka, she usually opts to keep her tail in the waves, both as a self-comfort and to stay hydrated. As the water drips off her body and onto the deck, she realizes that she is _so_ out of her wavelength.

“A mermaid,” says one of them, tall and broad and probably just a little younger than Luka. Barely an adult. “Guys, it’s … it’s a mermaid. Can you talk? Hello?”

“Kim, you’re an idiot,” says the shorter woman with pink hair. Behind her, the third pirate - short, with a glass eye-cover - quickly leaves the premises, probably to fetch the _boss_ that had been spoken about. “Even if she _can_ talk, she certainly can’t talk in French.”

 _I can speak every language known to the entire planet, you absolute pufferfish,_ Marinette thinks. She wonders if talking would help her case - allow them to see her as human, like them, and let her go. But it could end up being even _more_ dangerous, if it just raises her price tag.

“Mermaids aren’t _real_! They’re a _myth_! If she’s real, then why is it so much harder to believe that she would speak French?” The pair devolves into arguing, and Marinette can only watch, wondering how _these_ people caught her.

She gently probes the net with one of her claws. The rope is thick, but several of the strands fray with just one scratch of her nails. She would only need a few minutes to cut a hole big enough for her to get out, but she doesn’t think that she can do that as they all _stare_ at her. They’d probably tie her up more thoroughly the second that they noticed.

Marinette decides that the risk is worth it. “Hey, assholes,” she says, voice croaky from the fear. “If you’re planning on selling me to the highest bidder or whatever, you should get me some water. I can’t exactly survive without it.” It’s not exactly a lie, but it’s not really the truth, either. She _would_ die if on land too long, but not nearly as pressingly as she hopes to convey.

“I’ll go,” the short woman says, seemingly not wanting to mention the fact that she’d been wrong about Marinette speaking French. “Kim, just keep an eye on her.”

“It’s talking,” ‘Kim’ says. He’s staring at Marinette with round, wide eyes. The lack of malice in his facial expression makes her uncomfortable, so she opts to stare down at her bleeding form instead. The rope is really roughing up her scales, and the splintery wood that she'd been slammed into isn’t doing her many favors either. The saltwater will sting once she gets back in the ocean, but at least it’ll probably clean the wounds.

“Yes, dipshit, it’s talking,” the woman replies. “Just don’t get so stupefied that she beats your ass.”

“I won’t,” Kim responds. “C’mon, Alix, you watched me win the wrestling championship. You really think I could let a _mermaid_ out of my grasp? She doesn’t even have legs!”

_That’s the whole point._

“Whatever,” Alix says, disappearing into the interior of the ship. For a moment, Kim and Marinette just stare at each other.

“What’s your name?” Kim asks. Marinette gently scratches one of the ropes on the net, seeing if he will react - he doesn’t, instead staring straight at her face. She scratches slowly, such a small gesture that it barely makes any progress, but knowing that anything more will draw his attention. “Hey, look, we’re not bad people. We’re just down on our luck, and you’re our light at the end of the tunnel! The money that we’ll get from selling you will keep us set for life.”

Marinette doesn’t respond. The concept of being sold to the highest bidder, ending up with her scales as someone’s armor and her head on a wall, doesn’t appeal to her in the slightest. The chance of being sold to anyone who actually wants to keep her _alive…_ well. Marinette doesn’t have her hopes up.

“Are you gonna talk again?” he asks. “That’d be nice. It’d be cool to hear about where you come from. Where are you from? Um, do you know the coordinates? Just curious! No reason.”

Marinette, unfortunately for Kim, is not an idiot. The mere thought of them finding her clan, and _selling_ all of them, separating everybody miles and miles apart, brings bile to her throat. She finds that she cannot talk - not that she truly wants to- so instead, she opens her mouth and starts to sing. The melody is sweet and gentle, a soothing crescendo of her volume until Kim is mesmerized, staring at her. _Don’t move,_ Marinette thinks as she sings, trying desperately to push her intent into her singing as her mother had told her to do, if this were ever to occur. _Don’t move. Stay right there._

She scratches more frantically at the net now, watching the rope fray increasingly as she tries to rip it apart. It’s a little difficult to focus on singing with intent and escaping at the same time, but she doesn’t have much time to worry about it. All she can do is try to get out and off the ship before the woman gets back, because Marinette isn’t sure that she can fool her. The only reason that she knows she _is_ entrancing Kim is because he hasn’t tried to stop her yet.

One of the ropes snap, and Marinette tries to shove her body through the hole that it creates, before finding that it is only wide enough to fit one of her arms up until the shoulder. _Shoot._ Out of desperation, she increases the volume of her singing, hoping to entrance everybody on the ship - _Don’t move. Stay where you are. Don’t move._

The skin underneath her claws begins to bleed from how excessively she has scratched at the ropes, but the pain is minimal compared to the cuts under her scales, and the general soreness in her body from being pressed against those tight ropes. Oh, once she gets out of here, she is going to sleep for a month. It will be a nice sleep, too. Maybe she can even convince Alya to spend more time napping and less time being wooed by Nino.

_Don’t move. Stay where you are._

The second rope snaps. Marinette tries not to get excited yet, trying to focus on an unwavering melody as she wiggles out of the net. She manages to get the majority of her body out, except for the base of her tail, which gets tangled in the ropes. Shoot. She tries to pry her tail out with her hands, but it’s tangled too tightly. 

“Stop! What are you doing?” Kim demands, and Marinette realizes that she has long since stopped singing. He approaches her, looming above her, and it is just now that she notices the knife in his hand, sharp and glistening. She sees her reflection in it. She looks scared.

“Please,” Marinette finds herself begging. Whenever she had imagined being caught by evil humans, she’d imagined herself stoic, unwavering. But these humans don’t seem to be evil, which somehow makes it worse, and she is defenseless. “Please, just let me go.” He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t grab her, so there must be something stopping him. “I have a family. My - my Papa… he’s lost family before. Please don’t add my name to the list.”

Kim just stares at her for a while. Marinette’s eyes keep darting between him and the door that Alix had disappeared into - surely she must have finished grabbing water by now. She’ll be back any second. “Please,” she begs again. “You _know_ they’ll hurt me. You must.”

Kim doesn’t say anything. He just crouches down and saws at the part of the net that her tail is tangled in. When her tail is cut free, he simply stands back up and looks the other direction.

“Thank you,” Marinette says, more a breath than anything. She scrambles to the edge of the ship, ignoring how the base of her tail is pulsating with the pain of being so tightly constricted. Before she pushes herself through the railing and into the ocean, she says, “I’ll remember this. The ocean will remember this. Thank you.”

Then, she dives headfirst. Back home.

* * *

Marinette swims and does not stop. She doesn’t look behind her, doesn’t acknowledge the pain, doesn’t think twice about what they’ll do to Kim for letting her go. She just swims, and swims, and swims.

She doesn’t even really realize where she’s going until she’s already there. She sees Luka, sitting on his blanket and staring into the horizon, probably looking for her but unable to see her in the dark. She _is_ later than usual, after all, being kidnapped had really put a damper in her plans.

“Luka,” she gasps, barely even meaning to speak it out loud. Her voice is wretched, and she can’t even imagine how it might sound to his human ears. She pulls herself up to the shoreline, crawling towards him. “Luka, I don’t-”

“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, and Marinette’s not entirely sure when he got so close to her but she’s not complaining, “it’s okay, it’s okay. Mari, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know what to do,” she replies, hysteria creeping in until she has no say over the volume or pitch of her voice. Distantly, she wonders if she’s even comprehensible. “I don’t know what to do at all.”

“Oh, God, you’re hurt,” he says. “You’re bleeding.”

“They took me,” she replies, frantic, “and they let me go, too, but now that’s more people who know that I exist, and they’ll probably look for the others, and it hurts, and I don’t know what to do, and I don’t want to lose you, and, and, and, and, and, and-”

“Breathe,” Luka tells her. “Marinette, breathe. I’m not going anywhere. What do you need from me? What can I do?”

“I need to sleep,” she says. Sleep will help heal her. “But - but it’s a twenty minute swim home. The ship was closer to here than home and I think something would have gotten me if I made the trip. I need somewhere to sleep.”

Luka pauses, and then he just says, “Do you trust me?”

And she -

she says yes.

* * *

There’s nothing like a good, long, restful sleep. To be honest, Marinette has never really been used to the alternative. Her clan has always been content to let her sleep in, and similarly, she has never had a problem fulfilling the duties of anyone who also decides to spend the day snoozing. It’s a good system - one where love and health are mutually rewarded. Nobody is content to spend too many days sleeping, anyway, so it never becomes an issue.

When Marinette wakes up, she spends a lot of time drifting in between consciousness and sleep. Her brain insists that she should roll back over for another hour, but as she wakes up more fully, she realizes that things feel… different. She isn’t surrounded by soft sand, and there’s no salt water on her tongue. She’s in water, sure, but the surface beneath her is hard, and everything above her shoulders is dry.

Where had she fallen asleep? Maybe she’d spent the night moonbathing, but that rock is rough and coarse, and she doesn’t remember doing that…

Oh.

 _“Oh, Jesus, guys, what the fuck is that thing?”_ and the feelings of splinters underneath her scales.

 _“We’re gonna be rich!”_ and _begging_ a human for her life like some stupid sardine. Had there been any other choice? Marinette _has_ to believe that there wasn’t, if not just so she can look at her family in the eye again. If she hadn’t, she’d probably be tied up on their ship right now, slowly dehydrating and having her life ruined.

She remembers now, but she almost wishes that she didn’t. How had everything gone so horribly _wrong?_ So many new humans know that she exists. Oh, gosh, she doesn’t think that she was close enough to home for everyone to have to migrate, but what if Papa thinks otherwise? It’s not just _her_ life that’s in danger now, but her whole clan’s. Her whole _family’s._

Now that she’s more awake, she opens her eyes to get a better look of her surroundings. The room that she is in is completely white and mostly empty. The items that _are_ in the room are neatly organized on the surface to her right. There’s a white seat, and next to it, a tray on the floor that is seemingly filled with sand. There’s a mirror on the wall near the surface and the items, but it’s high enough up that it only reflects the white wall back at it. This must be where Luka lives, or at least where he washes. She wonders what time it is - he might be sleeping in another room. It had been late when she’d come to see him last night, after all.

The door is ajar, a fact that Marinette only notices when a small creature nudges through it. The creature is orange and fluffy, and does not seem to be confused or surprised by Marinette’s presence. That makes sense, she supposes. For all she knows, the creature has watched her sleep. Luka had never mentioned any pets, but she knows that his sister has a “goldendoodle.” Maybe this is a stray, then? She wonders if it’s a dog or a cat, or maybe something else, like a hamster.

“Hello,” she tells the creature, reaching her hand outside of the tub. It rubs its nose against it, though the dampness of her hand makes the sensation rather odd. “I won’t hurt you, I promise. I’m a friend of Luka’s. I assume you are, too.”

The creature hums in response: a vibrating little sound, similar to its own breathing. Marinette feels strangely at peace with this creature. It seems… wise, almost as if it is aware that she requires comfort.

“Oh, you’ve met my cat,” Luka says, and she looks up to see him lingering in the doorway. He has a mug in his hands - the pretty one with the sunset on it, that he brings to the beach when he’s trying to stay awake longer than usual. “I made you some tea. I figured tea is less of a risk than coffee, anyway. It’s, um, English Breakfast, which basically just means that people drink it in the morning.”

“Thanks,” Marinette says, feeling rather awkward, even though she hasn’t felt that way around Luka in quite a while. It feels different, now that they’re on his property instead of mutual ground. “This is where you live, I assume?”

“Uh, yeah,” he says. He seems like he might be feeling a little awkward too, given the increase of his filler words. He pulls down the lid on the seat and sits atop of it, handing her the mug. She takes it gratefully. The smell is strong, thick yet sweet, but not gross. She takes a small sip, nervous about the temperature, and finds that it’s not bad. It’s… pleasant, actually. “Though I don’t usually sleep in my bathtub. That can be your gig.”

Marinette snorts a laugh at that one. “I don’t know if I want to sleep in your bathtub more than just this once, thanks.” The lack of mobility is frightening. She _could_ leave without his help, sure, but it’d be uncomfortable, and she probably wouldn’t get far. “Is your cat new? You hadn’t mentioned it. I like it.”

“Yeah, I just adopted her from the shelter the other day,” Luka explains. The cat rubs against his leg, and then sits down on the floor between them. “I was going to tell you tonight, because I wanted your opinion. She has a brother, too, and I haven’t named either of them yet. I was thinking maybe I could name them after your gods? You know, Tikki and Plagg? Or would that be offensive?”

Marinette considers it for a moment, then shakes her head. “No, I don’t think that’s offensive,” she says. “I mean, sure, obviously the way that Tikki and Plagg loved each other was romantic, right, but it was more than just that. And… it’s nice. I think that they’d like it. They aren’t just our gods, you know, they created the humans, too. You have just as much of a say as I do.”

If Luka sees the situation differently, he doesn’t say. Instead, he says, “I’m glad that you’re all healed up. I was pretty downbeat about whether or not you would, even though I know you’d told me that the water heals you quickly. Your scrapes and rope burns went away within an hour after I poured, uh, an entire thing of Morton salt into the tub.”

“Thank you for doing that,” she says. “I hope you didn’t need it for anything else…?”

“Nah, it’s okay,” he says. “I can go grocery shopping tomorrow. I need more cat food anyway.” His sentence is over, but it looks like there’s more he wants to say, so she waits. After a few moments, he asks, “What happened to you? Who did that?”

She tells him everything. She tells him of Kim and Alix, the mentions of a boss, of the ropes cutting into her skin, how she’d been let go. “I’m okay,” she assures him, “but… I’m scared for my family, now. That’s five people who know that mermaids exist, and they could try to track my clan down next.” She takes another sip of her tea, throat dry from the countless words and the fear.

“How far away were you from them when you got taken?” he asks.

“Pretty far,” Marinette admits, though it doesn’t make her feel much better. “I was twenty minutes from home, but only five from here. I - I didn’t want to go home. My family knows that I’ve been visiting you, and they’re not happy about it. My mother told me that today, when I was coming to visit you, would be the last time. I - I don’t know if she’ll stick to that, and I’ll fight her on it, for sure, but you should know that I might not be able to see you again. Not for a while, anyway.”

Luka is quiet for a while, then, the way he tends to when faced with new information. His facial expression, though not exactly happy before, given the subject matter, is even more solemn now. Marinette lets him take his time, continuing to sip her tea. “I understand,” he says eventually. “I’ll go to the beach anyway. Maybe not every night, like before, but I’ll come as much as I can.”

Marinette scrunches up her nose. That's not the response that she had expected. “You don’t have to wait for me,” she tells him.

“I know,” he says, tender, “but I will anyway.”

The way that he _cares about her_ so voluminously, in a way that she never asked for but has been thanking the gods for ever since, overwhelms her. Tears push at her eyelids, but she bats them away. “It’s so unfair,” she says, barely a whisper, because she knows that if she’s any louder, she’ll lose volume control completely and be incomprehensible. “I really like you! You - you _get_ me, and I have so much fun when I visit you, and I don’t want that to go away. But my family is my _family._ ” She pauses for a moment, and then adds, “maybe I can come sometimes, anyway. Not a lot, but… maybe sometimes.”

“You shouldn’t risk it,” Luka says. “Not until it’s safe.”

She tilts her head, confused. “You’re still going to go to the beach every night? Even though you don’t think I should come?”

There’s another momentary silence, then, as he gears up to say whatever he feels he needs to. “No matter where you are, my heart sings for you,” he tells her. “Music resonates in my head whenever I think of you - the type that leaves the bars and the page and spills out everywhere. You’re the prologue to a whole new part of my life that I never knew existed, and I don’t want that to end, but I need you _safe_ more than I need anything else. I will wait as long as it takes, even if it’s forever.”

Marinette doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s love. He didn’t need to say the word for her to recognize it for what it is. “Oh,” she says. “I see.” She is debating opening her mouth to say something similar - though perhaps in a less poetic fashion - when another cat bumps its way through the door. This one is all black, less fluffy and more sleek, and immediately hops onto the rim of the bathtub, ignoring everything else in the room. “Plagg, I assume,” Marinette says, smiling at the interruption, and scratches him behind the ear. “What a handsome boy.”

“He’s probably grumpy because I haven’t given him his afternoon food yet,” Luka says. Marinette focuses on looking at Plagg so she doesn't have to look at Luka. She's afraid that if she looks at him for too long, the tears will come back with a vengeance. “Do you mind if I go do that real quick?”

“Of course not,” she replies, but then his words register. _Aw, phytoplankton._ “Oh, gods, is it really afternoon? How long have I been here?”

Luka looks at his watch. “Sixteen hours,” he says. “I got you back here around eleven last night. It’s around four in the afternoon now.”

“I should probably head back soon,” Marinette tells him. She looks down at her mug to see if she can use it as an excuse to stay, but there’s only about a sip left anyway. “Um, will you help me get into the water safely?”

“Yeah, of course,” Luka says, as if it was never a question. Of course it wasn't, not for him. “I’ll feed Plagg, change into something more water-friendly, and then I’ll help you get back. That sound good?”

“Yeah,” Marinette says, horribly sad. “Sounds good.”

* * *

He lifts her out of the bathtub with ease, for the first time showcasing to Marinette just how _strong_ he is. She doesn’t have time to blush and stammer about it, though, so she just reaches her arms around his neck for stability. She peers over his shoulder, now finally at a length where she can see her reflection in the mirror. She looks like a wreck, to be honest. Her hair has been out of the water for so long that it’s _dry,_ which borders on bizarre. She smiles at herself in the mirror, hoping to calm herself down, before her eyes drift to Luka. His back is to the mirror, so she sees the way his hair kisses the back of his neck, the way his shoulder blades move, the way his muscles flex when he holds her. It’s, um, engaging.

Marinette swallows and looks back at her own reflection. No need to get distracted.

She loses her view of the mirror when Luka turns around, done adjusting his grip on her. “Alright,” he says. “Anything you need before you go? Something to eat? When’s the last time you ate?”

Marinette’s stomach grumbles at the mention of food, but doesn’t want to discover whether or not human food makes her puke today. “No thanks,” she says. “I can eat when I get back. They’re probably worried sick, so I’d feel bad making them wait any longer."

“Right,” he agrees, beginning to walk through the house. She gets better peeks of his house as he walks through it - there’s a room with a few chairs and a table, and the room in the way back is the _kitchen,_ where Luka had gone to feed the cats. If she turns her head to the side, she can see a door further down the hallway, probably where he sleeps.

Everything shifts slightly as he walks, something Marinette doesn’t think much of until they step outdoors and she sees that they’re on the water. “I thought humans lived on land,” she says, confused. The area around them is empty. Luka’s house … boat … houseboat(?) is anchored at a relatively long wooden dock, but everything else around them is grass and trees and sea.

“They do, for the most part,” Luka says. “Um, houseboats tend to be cheaper… so it’s where I’ve been living for the past few years. I own the property up there, though, so eventually I’ll build something on it. It’s just a rather daunting project, you know?”

“Wait, so… this is all _yours_?” Marinette asks. She’s never really gotten over the fact that humans _own_ land, as opposed to it being something that they all share, but she gets the gist. “So no one can come here, right? It probably would have been easier to come here, then.” There had been a handful of times where there had been other people at the beach, where Marinette would be forced to simply wave hello to Luka and swim back home.

“I figured you’d say no if I asked you to come here,” he confesses. “I mean, if I were you, _I_ would have said no.”

“Maybe a month or two ago,” Marinette says. The fear of him hurting her had gone away rather quickly, but the fear of him selling her out hadn’t gone away for a while, even when she _knew_ she could trust him. She supposes it takes a lot more than a few weeks to unlearn the misanthropy you’ve been taught your whole life. It’s still there, sometimes, when she thinks about humans as a whole, and what they’ve done to her home, but… never towards Luka, and not towards the specific humans that he mentions, either. Luka says most of the damage is done by the “big guys,” the ones who have money and power to fall back on. She has no reason not to believe him. “But I trust you now. I trust you tenfold _._ ”

When she argues with her family tonight, (because, as much as she’d like to believe that they’ll have changed their minds upon her arrival, she knows that it will be an argument, and a long one, at that) she’ll mention how much safer it seems here, at Luka’s houseboat, than the beach. No one is _allowed_ to come here… so maybe that will help. Maybe she can negotiate monthly visits. It won’t be a lot, and she’ll still hurt when Luka’s away, but it’ll be _something_ better than this time right here being the last time that she ever sees him again.

… Oh. It’s just hit her, right now, that this could very well be the last time that she ever sees him again. She pulls back from where she’d been clinging to his shoulder so that she can study his face. He’s simply looking at her, smiling but sad. “I think this is where we say goodbye,” he tells her.

“I love you, too,” she says instead, a belated response to what he had told her in the bathroom earlier. “I’m going to fight for you, Luka. This isn’t it.” His eyes widen - probably not having expected her to speak the word _love_ into existence - and then soften, and his grip on her tightens.

“I know,” he says, and she feels his heartbeat. It's fast. “You never have to worry about me knowing that. I do.”

“Great,” she replies, just as soft.

“I don’t really know what to do now,” Luka confesses. For a brief moment, Marinette wonders if he’s going to talk about his worries about the future, but instead he just says, “like, do I throw you?”

Unexpected laughter bubbles up in her throat. “Oh, gods,” she says, before continuing to giggle. “I mean, I assumed that you were going to lower me in.”

“Oh! Oh, right,” Luka says, and does just that, lowering her closer to the water. She slips out of his grasp and splashes into the ocean, feeling immediately rejuvenated by the seawater that she’d been without for almost a full day now. "Morton" salt, whatever that is, doesn't compare to the real deal. When she resurfaces, she fixes him with a wide grin.

“Thanks,” she says, smiling. “It feels good to be swimming again.”

“I bet,” he says, smiling right back, but still with that melancholy air that’s been following him ever since she told him about her mother knowing. “It’s funny, you know, how much freer you look the second you’re in there. I’ve never felt that way about a place that I live.”

“You will someday,” she says. She tries her best not to ask him if he feels that way about her, instead. “Maybe once you build your house.”

“Maybe,” he agrees. “Do you know how to get home from here? I can pull up a map on my phone, if you need me to.”

“That’s alright,” she replies. She hasn’t been to Luka’s houseboat before, but once she gets far enough away from shore, the current and the waves will tell her where she needs to go. “I always get there eventually.”

Luka must realize that there’s nothing more left to say, not when she has a time limit for when she needs to get home. “Goodbye, Marinette,” he says, as gentle as the sea breeze before it turns into outright wind, “It’s been the privilege of my life, loving you.”

Marinette knows that if she’ll say anything else, she’ll cry. She could say _I love you I love you I love you_ or _I won’t give up on this_ or _maybe I could just stay here with you_ but she doesn’t say any of that. There’s no point, no time. Instead, she ducks back underneath the water, and she swims home.


	3. coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marinette tells her parents everything. She tells them about Luka, first and foremost, since he’s the most important part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and it ends!  
> write me on tumblr: sapphicmarinette

Marinette sees Nino before he sees her.

He’s on guard duty, but he’s looking in the other direction, holding his spear that he’d sharpened out of driftwood forever ago. Marinette remembers that day - he'd been freshly given adult responsibilities and had taken them very seriously. Alya had found it horribly hilarious. He doesn’t notice her for so long that she begins to worry about what will happen when he _does_ notice her. Are they all angry with her for leaving? She’s sure that they’re worried, of course, because her clan worries about almost everything, but that concern might fade into anger the second that she shows her face again.

As he turns to look at her, at least she can comfort herself with knowing that she’ll never have to wonder about it again.

“Marinette,” Nino says, eyes widening with disbelief. He swims closer to her, perhaps to make sure that she is uninjured, and then he turns back around. “Hey, dudes! Marinette’s back!”

“Are they angry?” she asks. She probably won’t have long until her family comes swimming, so she might as well make sure now.

“No,” Nino replies, voice stern in his insistence. “Well, Alya might threaten to deck you, but only because she’s been worried. Your parents aren’t at all.”

“Good, that’s good,” she says. “How have you-”

“Marinette,” a voice cries, and she barely has enough time to turn to see who is speaking before she gets knocked off her balance. A set of huge, muscled arms wraps around her, and then another smaller pair. Oh. Maman and Papa. “Oh, Mari, we’ve been so _worried_ about you.”

“I know,” Marinette says. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be gone so long, I swear.”

“We’re just glad that you’re alright,” Papa tells her. “It’s dangerous to lose track of time like that, seashell. You never know what could happen.”

 _I do know what can happen. Because it happened to me_. “I need to tell you everything,” Marinette says, her eyes suddenly burning from incoming tears. “Can we go sit down?”

“Of course,” Papa tells her, and she has never felt as safe as she does when her father holds her. “Of course.”

* * *

She tells her parents everything. She tells them about Luka, first and foremost, since he’s the most important part. Alya comes into the cave halfway through her story about being captured by the pirates, and stays uncharacteristically silent in the corner during the retelling. She tells them about Kim letting her go, and about how she stayed in Luka’s bathtub for the better part of a day afterwards. “I’m so sorry that I got caught,” Marinette says, fighting tears once again. “I hope that we won’t have to leave home.”

For a moment, her parents and Alya are all quiet, but then Papa sweeps her up in another hug. “Thank you for telling us about what happened to you, seashell,” he tells her. “We love you so, so much. No matter what.” 

Marinette had almost maintained control of her crying, but the display of Papa’s affection is enough to bring the tears back in strides. “I don’t want to never see Luka again, Papa! I’ve never… I… I don’t want a future without him in it anymore.” She’s not entirely sure how it will work - after all, she’s not entirely sure she could ever really _live_ with Luka. She’s not sure if that will be enough for him forever. But she wants to try. Oh starfish, does she want to try.

Papa goes quiet for just a moment. “Then we’ll work something out,” he says eventually, with the conviction of a king. “You won’t have to have a future without him.”

“What?” Marinette says, too shocked to feel much of anything yet. “You really mean that?”

“ _What?_ ” Maman demands, not sounding too pleased.

“Seashell, you _love_ him,” Papa says. “It’s as clear as shore water. It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong by loving him. I won’t let you lose somebody you love.” Marinette sees him look at Maman over her shoulder. Not a glare, but a promise. “I lost my family before. Maybe they got hurt… or maybe they just went to who accepted them the most. I don’t want that to be anybody but me. You are _so_ accepted and loved, sweet girl.”

“Thanks, Papa,” Marinette sniffles. “I love you.”

“We need to meet him,” Maman demands, out of nowhere, but it’s much more soft than stern. “No overnights until we’ve met him several times. He does not ever get to know where we are, unless it is absolutely necessary.”

“I need to meet him too,” Alya blurts out. “Best friend rule, no exceptions.”

Marinette can barely believe what they’re saying. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she blurts in one big breath. “Oh, Tikki, thank you.”

* * *

“Tell me everything,” Alya says that night, when they’re curled up together before going to sleep. Marinette, who had been laying on her back, turns over to face her best friend. “What’s he like? How do you pronounce his name again?”

“Luka,” Marinette repeats, enunciating for clarity. The look on Alya’s face encourages her to go on, so she does. “He’s - he’s beautiful. He likes to make a lot of music with an instrument called a guitar. His music is all very soft and gentle, which is accurate because he’s soft and gentle, too. His hair is blue, but lighter than mine, and he dyes it every few weeks. He has two cats, which are these small furry creatures, and I told him about Tikki and Plagg so he named the cats after them. He has a sister and a mother, but I don’t think he has much else in terms of family.”

“That sounds lonely,” Alya says. She sounds sympathetic, almost, which is something Marinette never would have thought Alya could be in regards to a human. “I can’t imagine only having two family members, instead of an entire clan.”

“I know,” Marinette replies. It _is_ an awfully sad thought. She wants to be with Luka, of course, but… she doesn’t know what she would have done if her family had sworn to never let her see him again. She doesn’t know if she would have been able to forsake her entire clan for a world that she cannot even walk in. “I think it’s more normal for humans, because they create their own families later.”

“Is he violent?” Alya asks, curious. “Like most other humans?”

“No,” Marinette says. “He’s the opposite. When I got hurt, he kept me safe. And I don’t… I don’t know if humans are as bad as we think they are. He told me that ‘everyone’s a little bit good, and everyone’s a little bit bad.’ I have no reason not to believe him.”

Alya hesitates, but the disappointment is rolling off of her in waves. Marinette braces herself for impact. “How can you say that, knowing what they’ve done to our home?”

“Because there are so many _more_ humans than the ones by the oceans,” Marinette says. “Luka told me that for every human that lives on the coast, there’s another _hundred_ further inland. We’ve only interacted with that one in a hundred! And… Luka says there are so many people who are trying to make the world better.”

“You’re going all off of what this guy is saying?” Alya replies, sounding baffled. “And you just believe him? What if he’s lying?”

Marinette shrugs. Sure, she _is_ just going off of what Luka is saying, but it isn’t like she can ask another human for advice. “What if he’s not? I mean, if he’s lying, and I keep visiting him, I’ll find out the truth eventually. If I stay here, assuming that they’re all horrible, I’ll never know the truth.”

Alya takes a moment before answering. Marinette doesn’t expect or even want Alya to become a human enthusiast overnight - but she wants Alya to try to understand that Luka isn’t bad. Luka being the exception to the rule that humans are bad is not quite true - but if Marinette can get her clan to see that, at least, it will be enough. “Do you love him, like your Papa said?”

“Yeah,” Marinette confesses, giddy at the mere mention of it. The smile is hard to wipe off of her face sometimes. “I - you’re my best friend, you know? The love I have for our clan - including you - is so stable and comforting and warm, like sunbathing. The love I have for him is completely different but it’s still so real.”

“You don’t need to explain to me the difference between platonic and romantic love, girlie,” Alya says with a big grin. It’s the _I’m about to blow your mind_ grin. Oh, dear. “While you were gone…” Alya pulls her hair up behind her neck, revealing a pendant around her neck that had been hidden before. Marinette’s jaw drops, which makes Alya grin even wider. “Nino and I exchanged pendants.”

Marinette shrieks. Alya holds the pendant out for Marinette to inspect, so she takes it in both hands, gently turning it over. It’s an orange seashell, perfectly intact and shiny. It’s _huge,_ too. Nino must have had to look for it for ages. “No way! I’m so happy for you. Oh, gosh! When’s the union?”

“Oh Plagg, Marinette,” Alya says, sounding exasperated but not in a way that indicates genuine frustration. Her voice does turn more serious for her following sentences, however. “I have no idea. It just happened. I wish you could have been around but… you were gone so fresh that we didn’t even realize you were missing yet. I went to find you afterwards and you weren’t anywhere.”

“I’m so happy for you,” Marinette tells her, clasping Alya’s hands in her own. She wishes she could have been there to geek out with Alya right after, but as long as she can come to the union, everything will be alright. “You deserve someone who makes you the happiest merperson in the world.”

Alya looks down at the pendant around her neck, and then back at Marinette. Her face softens. “If this Luka guy makes you even a tenth of how happy Nino makes me… I’ll give him a shot. But I want to meet him, alright? I need to know if he’s good enough for you.”

It’s the closest thing to approval that Marinette will get yet, but it’s more than enough. “Okay,” she agrees. “Oh, Alya, I think you’ll really like him.” She’s not entirely sure if it will be mutual - at least, not at first - but getting Alya to try is a fantastic head start.

Alya smiles, all fangs. “I’m gonna scare the shit out of him.”

“Yeah, thought so.”

* * *

The next night, Marinette leaves to go see Luka.

This time, she doesn’t have to sneak away. She doesn’t have to live with the constant dread of being found out and it ruining all of her familial relationships. She doesn’t have any guilt lingering in the pit of her stomach when she gets there.

Luka is laying on his back, looking up at the sky. His knees are pointed towards the sky with his feet firmly on the ground, however, so it is hard to see anything but his black jeans. She knows it’s him, though, because it’s the same jeans that are shredded all over.

“Luka,” she says, quiet, but he doesn’t seem to hear her. Marinette takes a look around, ensures that nobody is there, and then - “ _Luka_!”

He shoots up into a sitting position, pulling some wires out of his ears. “You’re _here_ ,” he replies, as if he simply cannot believe it. “I told you, it’s not safe!”

“Says you,” she responds, smiling so widely that her face might split in two. “They know that I’m gone.”

Luka scoots closer to the shore, and Marinette does the same. She sits in the water with the waves at her back, finding that she doesn’t want to look at anything but him. He still looks concerned, with his eyebrows knit together. It’s cute. “They know? What… what did they say?”

“Well, it’s more like what _didn’t_ they say,” Marinette replies, trying to force her smile into something more manageable. There certainly had been varied reactions - not only between her parents, but between her clanmates, too. “They _didn’t_ say that I can’t see you.”

“Wait, really?” Luka asks, and _there_ it is, that smile stretching across his face, too. It’s infectious, so Marinette gives up on trying to control hers.

“I mean, there are a few limitations,” she explains. “They want to meet you. Er, like, soon? So does my friend, Alya. And I can’t come during the nighttime anymore.”

The smile evaporates off of Luka’s face. “They want to _meet_ me? Are their fangs and claws as sharp as yours?”

Marinette doesn’t tell him that both of those tend to get sharper with age. “My father actually seems genuinely excited to meet you,” she explains. “My mother, er, not so much, but she won’t harm you in any way, I swear. At most, she might interrogate you.”

Despite her attempts to soothe him, he’s still frowning. “I don’t know if it’s safe in the daytime, Mari,” he says. “I don’t know if you’ve ever been here when it’s light out, but there’s usually… I don’t know, at least twenty people. It just won’t work.”

“What about your houseboat?” Marinette asks. “It seemed like you had a lot of space to yourself over there.” It’s not like she has to come at high noon, anyway. She’s perfectly comfortable eating a few early dinners with her clan and then coming to visit him until the sun goes down. A few hours a day, a few days a week, is so much better than never seeing him at all.

Luka thinks about it for a moment. “That’s true. Some people might see silhouettes from further down the beach, but I don’t think they’d be close enough to see anything…” He’s quiet for a moment. She can tell that he’s still stressed, but it seems a calmer type of worry, now. “I think it will work.”

“Me too,” Marinette agrees. “And it doesn’t have to be a secret anymore. That’s already great.”

“Not for you, at least,” Luka says, with a soft little smile. It’s not a happy one, though. “I don’t think it’ll ever be anything but a secret for me.”

The idea makes Marinette rather sad. Luka’s family seems nice. She’d love to meet them someday, but it’s just not something that can ever be wise. Even the nicest humans might blurt something out to somebody unsavory in a moment of shock.

She can’t think of anything to say to that, but luckily Luka speaks again. “I had no idea that I’d be seeing you so quickly. It’s the best surprise.”

“I didn’t know that I’d be here, either,” Marinette tells him. “I went back expecting yelling and arguments, and even maybe for my entire clan to move. But… they love me more than they dislike humans, I suppose.”

“You’re lucky,” Luka says. “They genuinely love you. That’s rare.”

“I know,” Marinette replies. She thinks of him when she says, “I’m the luckiest mer in the world.”

* * *

Maman and Papa meet Luka three days later.

Papa and Marinette swim side by side, but Maman trails slightly behind. She makes comments on the majority of their surroundings during the journey. “You should stick to the sand during this part, Marinette. It’s too shallow to do anything else” and “This part is safer. See how that rock covers you?” 

In the past, the teachable moments have bothered Marinette, but right now, she feels too nervous to be flustered by it. “Yes, Maman,” she says at every comment. “I will, Maman.”

“I’ve never spoken to a human before,” Papa says, once they’re almost there. He sounds bizarrely timid. “Is the dialect quite different? Do you have trouble understanding each other?”

“No,” Marinette says, thinking back to the very first time she had met Luka. It had been a little _embarrassing,_ honestly, not knowing about some of his human contraptions. Hopefully he doesn’t bring up anything too complicated, since that might alienate her parents even more. _Oh, goodness, I hope Luka doesn’t mention the concept of ‘cruelty-free’_ _to Maman and Papa._ That would be exhausting to explain. “Not really. If you don’t know a word that he says, just ask him, and he’ll explain it.”

“Don’t ask a human for help,” Maman scolds Papa. Marinette can only wonder why Maman is so belligerent now - after all, Papa is the one who had suffered the loss, right? “You can’t let him know that you’re out of your depth. Humans will always use that to their advantage.”

Marinette tries not to laugh at the idea of Luka being cold and calculating. He’s certainly smart enough to adopt those qualities, but his heart is too big and soft. “I can always ask him on your behalf, Papa,” she says. “Luka isn’t like that.”

“We need to go into this with an open mind, Sabine,” Papa says. Neither of them seem to be responding directly _to_ Marinette, which is a bit aggravating. She tells herself that it’s just because they need to comfort each other. “After all, we raised the smartest merperson in the entire clan, right, dear?”

“We did,” Maman confirms. Marinette smiles to herself, fond despite the anxiety. “But she is also young and newly in love. You know, I was rather hoping you’d just join up with Alya and Nino, Marinette.”

Marinette bursts out into giggles. The idea is so funny that she cannot even be angry. “ _Maman_ ! Those two are so insufferable together. I could never _join that._ ” Sometimes, Alya and Nino baby-talk each other like crazy, and it’s embarrassing to witness. “ _How’s my starfish doing today?”_ Blugh. No thanks.

“I think I even would have preferred Chloé,” Maman muses, perhaps only for herself. “I think you could have tamed her.”

“That’s a terrifying thing to say,” Marinette responds, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “Also, kind of messed up? _Double_ also, please don’t say that in front of Luka. I don’t want him to feel excluded.”

“I won’t,” Maman says, but Marinette does not feel very reassured. “Though I doubt that any exclusion he feels will be worse than what merfolk have experienced for centuries.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to that.

* * *

Luka, for lack of any better term, looks very scared. He’s sitting on the dock next to his houseboat, the bottoms of his pants rolled up so that he can dip his feet in the water. He’s a bit more dressed up than usual - dress pants instead of his skinny jeans, and a button-up instead of his zipper hoodie. He’s playing with his fingers, too busy looking down to see Marinette and her family approaching. Papa dives back underwater, seemingly for a last minute chat, so they both follow suit.

“Oh, Sabine, look at him,” Papa says, gentle. “That’s the most nonthreatening boy I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s shy.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Maman says, but even she sounds surprised. Marinette wonders what Maman had been expecting. Perhaps she had been expecting an older man, battle-scarred from killing mermaids. She definitely does not sound as though she had expected Luka.

“I’m begging you to be nice, Maman,” Marinette says, knowing that it is only a matter of time until Luka notices them. She has to plead her case right now or hold her peace. “I really like him.”

“I know,” Maman replies. Luckily, the anger has faded out of her voice, instead replaced with a softer exasperation. Marinette can deal with that. A condescending tone has never hurt anybody, right? (Marinette is lying to herself - once Chloé had called Marinette a _humanoid sardine_ and she had cried herself to sleep that night.) “That’s why he’s alive, sweetie.”

“ _Maman,_ ” she hisses, unsure why she is still surprised when it is very clear where her mother stands on the situation. “That’s uncalled for!”

“Alright, alright,” Papa says with a laugh, as if they are arguing over chores and not the life of Marinette’s … friend. “I think it’s time to put your human out of his misery - oh, Sabine, I didn’t mean it like _that._ ”

When they resurface, Luka spots them right away. He smiles and waves, but it looks more like a grimace. “Um, hello,” he says once they make it into earshot. He starts off timid, but sounds firmer as he continues. “It’s so nice to meet you both. I’m Luka.”

“Luka,” Papa says. He reaches up to grasp Luka’s hand in his own, shaking it firmly. “I’m Tom, and this is my wife Sabine. We are happy to meet you as well, right, dear?”

“Yes,” Maman replies, reaching out to shake Luka’s hand as well. She is smiling with no teeth. “A pleasure.” 

Marinette watches Luka’s throat as he swallows. “I have to say, um, thank you for even coming to meet me at all,” he says. “I’m glad that you’re giving it a shot. I understand why you wouldn’t.”

“Of course,” Papa says, making it seem a lot more clear-cut than it actually had been. Marinette’s glad, really. Luka doesn’t need to know about how stressful it was, at least not yet. “Tell us about yourself, Luka! What’s your family like?”

“It’s small,” Luka says, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “My mom travels a lot, but she visits when she can. Tonight she’s performing music for a crowd of five-hundred people, which she was really excited about. My sister, Juleka, lives an hour away with her fiancée.”

“Oh, how exciting!” Papa replies, more of a rumble than anything else. “We have a union coming up soon in our clan, as well. Must be that time of year!”

“Hopefully no more are coming up,” Maman says, shaking her head. “I’m tired of surprises.”

Marinette laughs nervously at the implication. “Maman, you’re so funny. Look, you see all the trees?” She points up, past the shore. “No one is allowed to come past there unless Luka invites them. So it’s a _lot_ safer than the beach.”

Marinette hopes that it will make Maman ease up, but it seems to have the opposite effect. “How often do you invite other humans?”

Luka smiles sheepishly. “Not often,” he admits. “I, uh, am trying to be more positive, but… I don’t really like humans either sometimes.” He says it as if he's prepared for the reaction to be negative.

However, if anything, Maman's smile is warmer than the first. “I suppose we have more in common than I may have thought,” she says.

* * *

Papa talks the whole journey home about how much he likes Luka. _Do all humans treat elders like that? The respect! My, Marinette, he could teach you a thing or two! Oh, seashell, you know I’m only kidding._

Maman settles for a simple _he seems good for you,_ but Marinette takes that as an even bigger victory.

* * *

When they get home from meeting Luka, Marinette knows she needs to talk to her father. It doesn’t have anything to do with how he had treated Luka or anything, since that had been more than she had hoped for, but… she just gets this _feeling_ in her gut. Papa needs somebody to talk to, and… maybe the only person who will really understand is her.

She finds him on the sunbathing rock. He is staring into the sky, and does not even seem to recognize that Marinette has arrived. “Papa?” she asks. “Are you okay? Do you need to be alone?”

“No, seashell,” Papa says. “Come sit with me. I’d love to talk to you.”

Marinette doesn’t need to be told twice, having sorely missed her father while she was away. She crawls onto the rock next to him, laying on her back so that she can look into the sky, too. She wonders what he sees.

They remain quiet for a moment, but then he speaks up. “I spent a lot of time hating all humans,” Papa says. Usually, he is boisterous, happy - but now, he sounds forlorn. “My mother just disappeared one day, out of the blue. We thought that she had been caught and killed. I would go so far out on my patrols, hoping to see one so I could hurt them. I thank Tikki every day that I never did.”

“What made you change your mind?” Marinette asks. Due to the rage that the topic can cause, their clan rarely speaks of humans. She never would have guessed that her father had an extra reason to dislike them until Maman had said so.

“Your grandmother loved human jewelry,” Papa says. “It was rare to find it, but whenever someone did, we all knew that she would appreciate it the most. She loved the ones that looped around her wrists - bracelets, but she called them something else. One day, months after she was gone, I woke up with her favored gold jewelry right next to my face. I knew then that not only was she alive and safe… but that she left willingly. She was such an adventurous person, your grandmother. I never told anyone. I thought I owed her that. At first, I thought she simply left to travel the ocean. But then you started sleeping in.

“You started sleeping in all day, just like my mother had before she left. My mother left at night, too, though I admit I did not realize that was the reason for your sleeping until you … left, too.” He goes quiet for a moment, but the silence is too emotionally charged for Marinette to open her mouth. “Your mother told me about your argument. She told me about how you said that maybe she left of her own accord, to be with people she loved just as much… and I know that you’re correct.”

Tears build up in Papa’s eyes, which makes her start to cry as well. “I love you so much, seashell,” he tells her. “Luka is a fine young man, tail or no tail, and it doesn’t take a shark to see that. He seems patient and gentle. I am so proud of you for fostering a love like that.”

“I love you, Papa,” Marinette says, and hugs her father.

* * *

Marinette begins to spend a good amount of her time floating by Luka’s dock. In the daytime, he’ll put a tarp up to shield her from the eyes of any prying neighbors, but sometimes she refuses it. She likes the feeling of the sun on her scales, after all.

One time, when she gets there, Tikki and Plagg are curled up together on the dock. They’ve both gotten so much bigger since the first time that she’d met them. Cats are fascinating creatures, though they don’t seem to like water very much. Marinette usually needs to shake her hand dry before petting them, otherwise they’ll shy away. 

“They miss you when you’re gone, you know,” Luka says once he comes out of the houseboat. He’s wearing a pair of blue swim shorts with a towel slung over his shoulder. Upon further inspection, she realizes that the shorts have little sharks on them. Pfft. Cute.

“No way,” Marinette says. It’s a sweet sentiment, but not one she necessarily believes. “Half the time, they don’t come out of the houseboat.”

“Only because Plagg’s scared of falling in the ocean again,” Luka says, laughter in his voice. Marinette smiles too - though it had been scary at the time, the image of a soaking wet and screaming Plagg is a little funny when she thinks back. “Sometimes they sit on the windowsill that faces the ocean and scream.”

“Aww,” she says. She grabs onto one of the poles of the dock for leverage, and holds out her other hand to the cats. Tikki sniffs it lazily, licking one of Marinette’s fingers, but Plagg remains unimpressed. “I miss them when I’m not around, too.”

Luka hesitates as he sits down onto the dock, next to the cats. He sticks his feet in the water, submerged up to his calves. Marinette pushes off of the dock to float on her back, her head tilted towards him. “You know, maybe - maybe someday...”

She waits for him to finish, but after a few moments it becomes clear he has no intent on ending the sentence. “Maybe someday what?” she asks.

He scratches the back of his neck. “Nevermind,” he says. “I’ll propose that idea once I can figure out how to make it work logistically.”

Marinette feels as though something has gone over her head, but doesn’t feel like embarrassing him to figure out what. “Okay,” she responds, ready to brush it off. Her neck cramps at the angle she’s in, so she straightens back out. No longer wanting to tread water, she asks, “Is it okay if I hold onto you?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” he says, so she wraps her hands around his ankles, making sure not to accidentally dig her claws in. “You’re good at being careful,” he observes. “You could hurt me real bad if you wanted.”

“Don't ever say that,” Marinette replies, shocked into a laugh. “Besides, one of the first things you ever told me is that you aren’t scared of me.”

“I’m not,” Luka confirms. She’d certainly been scared of him, back then. It’s funny how much things can change. “Your song is so gentle. I’ve never had any reason to.” Marinette pushes herself up, hands still around his ankles. 

“Woah,” he says, grabbing the dock to sturdy himself. “Jeez, it’s like you’re trying to pull me in.”

“I’m not,” she replies, mimicking the way that he had just said the same phrase. “I just wanted a better look at you.” She certainly does have a good look at him now, though she has to look upwards since her head is hovering right around his shoulders. Nevertheless, their faces are close enough that she feels self-conscious about her breath. Hopefully she doesn’t have any kelp stuck in her teeth, either.

“Well, you’re certainly impressing me with your upper body strength,” he says. “I’m so lucky that you’re around. You have no idea.”

Marinette can’t help the grin that makes its way onto her face. “Shut up,” she says, embarrassed, looking away.

“I mean it,” he insists, his voice taking on a gentle quality. He touches her chin with two fingers and tilts her head so that she's looking at him again. “Can I kiss you?”

Marinette lets go of his ankles immediately, crashing back into the water. When she resurfaces, she's shaking her head frantically. “No,” she says. “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

Luka doesn't seem surprised, but he frowns anyway. She almost wants to apologize again, but he'd probably get on her case about how she doesn't have to. “You can’t, or you don’t want to?"

“Of course I want to! I just - I can’t. I’d hurt you.” She pulls down her bottom lip to show off her fangs. “I don’t want to split your tongue in two or something.”

“Aw, that’d be sick, though,” he says. “You know how much I like snakes.”

“I’m not turning you into a snake,” she replies, though the concept is so ridiculous that she begins to giggle. He doesn’t seem to be taking the rejection badly, thank gods. It’s not that she doesn’t want to kiss him. She _very much_ would like to kiss him, but it’s not a good idea. If she’s learned anything in the past year, it’s that merpeople quite literally have tougher skin than humans. Just because Alya and Nino mack on each other at every opportunity doesn’t mean that she can kiss Luka just as easily. Plus… she’s never kissed anybody before. Not even an innocent kiss as a kid.

“I actually prepared for that,” he says, standing up quickly. “The fangs, I mean. Can I go grab something from the houseboat? I’ll be right back.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Marinette replies, though she hadn't expected him to say that. “But if you come out here with a nail file, I’m going home.”

“I would _never,_ ” is the reply, Luka thoroughly scandalized by the concept. “It’s harmless. I’ll be right back.”

The second that he is out of eyeshot, she immediately starts hovering over the cats. “Hi,” she says, tender. She has grown to love them something fierce. “You guys look comfy.” Plagg meows at the disruption, readjusting onto his back. “Do you want cuddles or is this a trap?”

“It’s a trap,” Luka says, peeking his head out of the doorway before the rest of his body follows suit. His words sound weirdly slurred. “You can’t trust him.” He smiles widely, but his upper teeth are covered by something black.

“Woah,” Marinette replies, peering over the dock to get a better look. “What’s that?”

Luka pops it out of his mouth and shows it to her. “It’s a mouth guard. People wear it while playing sports so they don’t get their teeth knocked out. I can wear one, but only if you’re comfortable with it.”

When Luka puts it back in his mouth, Marinette can’t help but laugh. “You look like a pufferfish,” she tells him. It’s funny and heartwarming, the fact that he’d prepared for this. He must really want to kiss her.

“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment,” he says, shimmying off the dock and into the water. It’s shallow enough that he can stand, but he lowers himself so that his chin is barely above the water. He’s on her level now.

He looks as though he's about to ask again, but she doesn't give him the chance. She presses her lips to his as gently as possible. His lips are soft and taste like something fruity and sweet, which makes her wonder if he’d put some chapstick on his lips while he’d been inside. She’ll have to tease him about it later. Once it becomes clear that her fangs are not an immediate obstacle, she kisses him harder. However, Marinette realizes very quickly that the mouth guard is getting in the way more than her fangs will. “You can take that off if you want,” she says. “Just don’t put your tongue anywhere I can slice it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, pulling the mouth guard out and kissing her again in the same motion. Luka kisses like a giver. He kisses her slow and smooth, letting her make every furthering step. He gives relentlessly, and Marinette desperately tries to keep up with how much she needs to take. 

“I love you,” Luka says, barely a whisper. He seems unable to pull away for long, because he chases her mouth with his between phrases. “God, do I love you.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in any gods,” Marinette replies, mainly to tease him.

“No,” he answers, shaking his head. “I still don’t. But I believe in you. Same thing.”

“Oh,” she says, wondering just how Luka became the embodiment of music, and kisses him again.

(She gets home late that night.)


End file.
